FEICA is delighted to welcome
Christophe Cabarry, Founder and
CEO of SpecialChem back to
the 2019 European Adhesive
and Sealant Conference &
EXPO.
FEICA CONNECT spoke with
Christophe to get a preview
of some of the key
concepts he will discuss at
FEICA 2019 in Dubrovnik
Following on from his
thought-provoking presentation
on ‘Digitization and its impact
on customer-facing functions’
last year, Christophe will this year
delve into some of the more
practical aspects around
implementing digitalization in B2B
organizations.
Let’s hear from Christophe:
CONNECT: Christophe, how will
this session complement and
build on last year’s presentation?
Christophe Cabarry (CC): Last
year we examined the impact of
digitization and why companies
need to embrace it to secure
their long-term futures. I believe
this need is now generally
accepted and over this last year,
many businesses have been
taking steps to digitalize.
In fact,
every business we talked to last
year is taking action in this area.
As a result, I concluded that delegates would find a discussion of
the key practical challenges B2B
organizations face when
digitalizing to be most useful.
CONNECT: You say ‘many businesses have been taking steps to
Implementing; can you give us some
examples?
CC: Yes, there are in fact two
aspects to this:
First, what I call
the visible part of the iceberg.
This includes a number of
companies who have created
their own online platforms. For example,
- Lanxess created the CheMondis online market place for chemicals (www.chemondis.com) and
- Evonik launched the OneTwoChem online market place (www.onetwochem.com)
- Chemours created the Ti-Pure Flex™ online portal for purchasing Ti-Pure™ brand titanium dioxide (shop.chemours.com/tipure)
- In addition, Amazon Business is also accelerating its expansion plans and who knows where these may end
All of these, of course, represent major investments by large companies.
However, there is also a
much bigger submerged
portion of the iceberg,
which comprises large,
deep-rooted investments
by every company we are
talking to.
This often includes the
implementation of Customer
Relationship Management
(CRM) systems with marketing
automation tools.
We also see B2B companies hiring experienced digital professionals. BASF, for example, has
announced that it will hire 300
high caliber digital specialists in
the coming years. To gauge the
importance BASF places on this, it
is worth noting that it mentioned
‘digital’ 51 times in its 2017
Annual Review, compare to one
time in 2015!
CONNECT: What do you see as
being the main challenges to the
successful implementation of digitization?
CC: The challenges fall into four
main categories:
- Organization
- Resources
- Tools and systems, and
- Management mindset
In my
presentation, I will address each
of these in turn. I touched on
some of the organizational challenges last year, particularly
those facing the sales function.
For digitalization to
succeed, agility is key
Traditionally, the industry likes stable
organizations, deep analysis and
comprehensive plans.
In the digital world, success
requires rapid experimentation
and quick implementation
People need to be free to experiment; if it works – great – repeat
the process; if it doesn’t – scrap it
and move on. In addition, we
have found that some companies regard digitalization as an IT
project, or try to reduce it to
‘digital marketing’. But it shouldn’t be led by IT people, although
they are of course needed, and
you can’t just install a CRM and
say ‘Great – we’re digitalized
now!’ The organizational
challenge is linked to the
resources challenge.
The digital
maturity of an organization – in
terms of people resources –
needs to grow at the same
speed as its digital complexity. If
the complexity grows faster than
the maturity, the process will fail.
You need to install and develop a team with the required
know-how and invest in appropriate systems and processes at the
same pace to successfully exploit
digitalization.
CONNECT: That brings us nicely
onto resources. What are your
thoughts about the requirements in
this area?
CC: We see many companies
that want to embark on digitalization using only their existing
staff. They always struggle. You
need some external people in
the team who have actually
‘done digitalization’ themselves;
who know what to do and act as
a catalyst to accelerate the
process and bring digital
maturity. In this case, the whole
process goes faster and there is
less trial and error.
In summary, you will need
to get your teams trained
and make sure
they have
the freedom to stay on top
of this fast-moving area
You will also need to hire some
people who have been there,
seen it and done it! These can
be consultants or freelancers
that you will need for some time.
CONNECT: The third challenge is
tools and systems. We touched
on these last year. What changes have you noted in this area?
CC: The main change has been
in the philosophy around the
information system (IS). So, while
it’s good to install new software,
such as a CRM, if you don’t
have the right IS philosophy you
will fail. We can compare the
situation to the early days of
enterprise resource planning
(ERP) systems. People spent
several years and millions of dollars implementing huge behemoths of systems. It was often
quite a traumatic experience.
Now we have the option of web-based software as a service
(SaaS), which offers vastly improved agility. You don’t own
the software, you ‘rent’ it. It is
quick to configure and connect,
but if it doesn’t work, you can
rapidly move to an alternative.
The challenge here is integration.
Your data should not be ‘stuck’ in
one piece of software; it should
be in data warehouses or
‘datalakes’. This enables data to
be accessed through a range of
systems, facilitating useful,
in-depth analyses. For example, if
you have a product information
management system (PIM)
feeding a website, you can bring
data on how many times each
piece of product information has
been viewed into your CRM to
analyze and help optimize your
marketing efforts. This sort of
activity is difficult to do in
all-encompassing ERP systems
because they are not easy to
plug into.
CONNECT: This change in
approach to information systems
requires a change in mindset and
you mentioned management
mindset as being the fourth
challenge. What will you reveal
about this aspect of digitization?
CC: Last year I talked about the
importance of change management and culture. Building on
this, I can say there are now very
few managers who don’t see the
need to digitalize. They usually
focus on digitalization of the interactions with the market because
customers are demanding it and
they have no choice, particularly
in the western hemisphere.
However, what’s changed since
last year is that they often don’t
know what to do exactly because the subject if so big and
complex and touches on every
area of the business. My recommended approach is first to
ensure effective change
management to instill a sense of
urgency and then to build a
three-year ‘digital roadmap’;
sketch it out and make sure it is
integrated into the business
strategy.
You will probably need
consultants who have experience of actually doing this to
help. The road-map is absolutely
necessary to engage and
inspire the whole team and it
accommodates the time
needed to implement and
assess new software. You can
also plan your new hires; today’s
choices will be smarter if you
know where you need to be in
three years. Then, break it into
small actionable chunks and
deliver small wins.
CONNECT: Will you be able to
provide our delegates with some
real-life examples to illustrate
these challenges and how to
address them?
CC: Yes, I will. Of course, I won’t
be able to mention specific
named customers, but I will
examine the trends and provide
examples of how actual B2B
companies have successfully
overcome some of these
challenges. I think my presentation will provide delegates with
plenty of food for thought!
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